Intelligence

[emilyek]

To me, it's hard to imagine that if the two groups were contemporaneous that they didn't assimilate (if they could) or that one didn't destroy the other somehow.

I guess the line is: early moderns were brighter and had better technology; and that it seems unlikely to expect enlightened detente from either group, and that resources may not have been the only thing they were fighting over. If humans wiped out whole species of animals, why not other humans who they perhaps didn't see as fully human? Or perhaps the Neanderthals themselves were 'resources' for the early moderns? Just speculating.

Also I wonder if there has been speculation about diseases brought by early moderns-- sort of in the mode of old world/new world contact.

 

[JJ650]

Concerning the competition theory bewteen the the opposing primate families...you have to think that environment had a great deal to do with it. Neanderthals were adapted primarily for colder climates (read: ice age era) while our modern ancestors were better suited for the temperate climates which eventually became the "norm" as the ice age ended. As modern humas moved further into the Neanderthal's area, competition most likely increased.
As far as intelligence among the species, I do think we overlook at other species abilities to comprehend and communicate.
Dolphins, Orcas and the other highly vocal aquatic mammals are HIGHLY intelligent. Orca females have been known to teach their offspring certain "tricks" to make hunting easier. Dolphins are known to do the same. It is an observed behavior and hasn't been proven that they vocalize it to one another.

Dogs and cats can be surprisingly clever too. More so than you would expect. I condsider my pooch ( a lab-cocker mix) to be pretty smart! When you talk to her, she really does listen. She recognizes different objects by name. She knows the difference between her "baby" and what her "lobster" are. When told to find one or the other, she always brings back the correct ones. Tell her go find "Idgy" (our cat) and she has an absolute ball and you always know she found her! If throw in something that she doesn't know by name, she'll whine, but when you show it to her and say it again a few times, she'll figure it out. Maybe she has just associated that with particular sounds but isn't that how you learned what something is? =)

Squid and Octopus are hihgly intelligent as well. Both can unscrew a bottle that has a food reward (crab or fish) with never been exposed to a bottle. They recognize shapes, colors and patterns. Their communication is truely beyond what we are able to do. Just sit and watch a cuddlefish put on a color display. It truely is amazing. It takes some degree of intelligence to create communication in that manner. Both can be surprisingly gentle creatures as well.

I feel we take our intelligence for granted and don't realize what other species are capable of, or can do.

 

[Nithin]

Originally posted by: JJ650
I feel we take our intelligence for granted and don't realize what other species are capable of, or can do.

fascinating though your examples are, you have to admit there is a huge difference
between where we as a species have evolved mentally vs the known closest contender.

yes, its interesting that a squid can open a bottle, but don't you think a 2 yr old can do the same thing and we wouldn't give it a second glance. they are highly intelligent compared to other animals, but only if you leave humans out of the comparison.

 

[JJ650]

Of course there is a huge difference. I never said that there wasn't one!

I just feel that many creatures are smarter than what we give them credit for.

 

[blahblah99]

Dolphins are supposedly next to humans in the intelligence tree. They communicate and actively teach their young.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: Nithin

Originally posted by: JJ650
I feel we take our intelligence for granted and don't realize what other species are capable of, or can do.

fascinating though your examples are, you have to admit there is a huge difference
between where we as a species have evolved mentally vs the known closest contender.

yes, its interesting that a squid can open a bottle, but don't you think a 2 yr old can do the same thing and we wouldn't give it a second glance. they are highly intelligent compared to other animals, but only if you leave humans out of the comparison.

My question is, what are the limits in cognitive ability in humans vs the limits in cognitive ability in other animals. We have a very advanced set of languages. We believe some animals have advanced languages. However, one of the biggest differences is that we have a system of education and a written language. If you look into the not so distant past in the history of humans, there were many tribes, etc., that were referred to as being no more than animals. The cultures that conquered these indiginous peoples did not see them as possessing the same intelligence that we possess. We think differently today, and see the people of these other cultures as being just as intelligent.

 

[Malak]

Originally posted by: Nithin
Why is it that no other known species comes close to humans in intelligence?

Could it be because as species evolved, more intelligent beings wiped out lesser beings?

N.

That's assuming macro evolution is true, which it isn't.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

Originally posted by: Vee

Originally posted by: interchange
Some scientists believe that Neanderthal man was actually assimilated into our species instead of just being wiped out.

I'm afraid these are old speculations. We now know, for sure, that there was no assimilation whatsoever. The evidence is in DNA, and IIRC, mitochondry DNA.

Either mating couldn't produce any offspring, or any fertile offspring, or the idea was simply completely repulsive to both species.

I'm sorry, but you're espousing old speculations. Very few paleoanthropologists take the extreme position that Neandertals never interbred with the ancestors of modern humans. Not many molecular anthropologists do, for that matter. I personally find the evidence for some admixture more compelling. We do not know for sure either way. The fate of the Neandertals is still an enigma.

Originally posted by: Vee

There have been more than one study I think.

Sure, here are 20 more:
1. Cann, R. (1987) Mitochondrial DNA and human evolution. Nature. (325) 31-36.
2. Eller, E. (2001) Population extinction and recolonization in human demographic history. Mathematical Biosciences. (177 & 178) 1-10.
3. Excoffier, L. (2002) Reconstructing the demography of prehistoric human populations from molecular data. Evolutionary Anthropology Suppl. (1) 166-170.
4. Foley, R. (1998) The context of human genetic evolution. Genome Research. (8) 339-347.
5. Hammer, M. et al. (1998) Out of Africa and back again: nested cladistic analysis of human Y chromosome variation. Mol. Biol. Evol. 15 (4) 427-441.
6. Hammer, M. et al. (2001) Hierarchical patterns of global human Y chromosome diversity. Mol. Biol. Evol. 18 (7) 1189-1203.
7. Harding, R. et al. (1997) Archaic African and Asian lineages in the genetic ancestry of modern humans. Am. J. Hum. Genet. (60) 772-789.
8. Harpending, H. et al. (1998) Genetic traces of ancient demography. PNAS. (95) 1961-1967.
9. Harpending, H. & Rogers, A. (2000) Genetic perspectives on human origins and differentiation. Annu. Rev. Genomics Hum. Genet. (1) 361-385.
10. Hawks, J. et al. (2000) Population bottlenecks and Pleistocene human evolution. Mol. Biol. Evol. 17 (1) 2-22.
11. Hey, J. (1997) Mitochondrial and nuclear genes present conflicting portraits of human origins. Mol. Biol. Evol. 14 (2) 166-172.
12. Hurles, M. & Jobling, M. (2001) Haploid chromosomes in molecular ecology: lessons from the human Y. Molecular Ecology. (10) 1599-1613.
13. Kaesmann, H. & Pääbo, S. (2002) The genetical history of humans and the great apes. Journal of Internal Medicine. (251) 1-18.
14. Ovchinnikov, et al. (2000) Molecular analysis of Neanderthal DNA from the northern Caucasus. Nature. (404) 490-493.
15. Penny, D. et al. (1995) Improved analyses of human mtDNA sequences support a recent African origin for Homo sapiens. Mol. Biol. Evol. 12 (5) 863-882.
16. Przeworski, M. (2000) Adjusting the focus on human variation. Trends in Genetics. 16 (7) 296-302.
17. Relethford, J. & Jorde, L. (1999) Genetic evidence for larger African population size during recent human evolution. Amer. Jour. Phys. Anth. (108) 251-260.
18. Rogers, A. (2001) Order emerging from chaos in human evolutionary genetics. PNAS. 98 (3) 779-780.
19. Seielstad, M. et al. (1999) A view of modern human origins from Y chromosome microsatellite variation. Genome Research. (9) 558-567.
20. Vigilant, L. et al. (1991) African populations and the evolution of human mitochondrial DNA. Science. (253) 1503-1507.

John Hawks at Wisconsin-Madison has a blog in which he often discusses the genetics of human evolution. It's at johnhawks.net.

The basics of so-called Neandertal genetic incompatibility are: only relatively short sequences of mitochondrial DNA have been extracted from Neandertals. They have been shown to be different from modern sequences when analyzed as a population, but individually they are within the range of observed modern human sequences. Mitochondrial DNA has a host of other issues that cast doubt on its ability to reconstruct ancient demographic patterns, anyway.

If (and that's a big if) a Neandertal nuclear sequence were recovered, how would we know it was, in fact, Neandertal, and not modern contamination? (Believe me, it takes a lot of work to get bones from the field to the lab, specimens pass through a lot of hands.)

In short, there is scant evidence that Neandertals were genetically incompatible (a different species) with modern humans, or their 'more modern looking' contemporaries.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

Originally posted by: emilyek

The difference between 'Koko love dolly' and a retarded human being is still, typically, enormous.

The gorilla can learn very basic human language. How many words of gorilla do you know?

Louis Herman out in Hawaii has produced very compelling evidence that dolphins fully understand syntax.

Arguments for a gulf separating human and animal intelligences remind me of now discredited arguments that humans are unique because we use tools.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: Gigantopithecus

Originally posted by: emilyek

The difference between 'Koko love dolly' and a retarded human being is still, typically, enormous.

The gorilla can learn very basic human language. How many words of gorilla do you know?

I'm not around gorillas very often, but my vocabulary of dog is fairly good. I don't know how complicated their vocabularly is, but I can tell the difference between eat (food), water, play, someone's outside,...

 

[Nithin]

Originally posted by: DrPizza

I'm not around gorillas very often, but my vocabulary of dog is fairly good. I don't know how complicated their vocabularly is, but I can tell the difference between eat (food), water, play, someone's outside,...

you should change your nick to DrDolittle. haha.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: Nithin

Originally posted by: DrPizza

I'm not around gorillas very often, but my vocabulary of dog is fairly good. I don't know how complicated their vocabularly is, but I can tell the difference between eat (food), water, play, someone's outside,...

you should change your nick to DrDolittle. haha.

Just about... sometimes, I'll be busy, one of the dogs will come over, make a bark sound, and I'll look at my wife and say "Dozer says he needs water." Sure enough, the water bowl will be empty, but the food dishes will be full.
As far as intelligence in animals goes, we can't say the word "ride" near two of our dogs. So, we started spelling the word. Now, if we spell "r - i - d - e", one of our dogs goes nuts... he's figured out what we're spelling, or spelling it slowly is close enough to pronouncing it... Regardless, he wants to and insists on going.

 

[Xyo II]

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: Nithin

Originally posted by: DrPizza

I'm not around gorillas very often, but my vocabulary of dog is fairly good. I don't know how complicated their vocabularly is, but I can tell the difference between eat (food), water, play, someone's outside,...

you should change your nick to DrDolittle. haha.

Just about... sometimes, I'll be busy, one of the dogs will come over, make a bark sound, and I'll look at my wife and say "Dozer says he needs water." Sure enough, the water bowl will be empty, but the food dishes will be full.
As far as intelligence in animals goes, we can't say the word "ride" near two of our dogs. So, we started spelling the word. Now, if we spell "r - i - d - e", one of our dogs goes nuts... he's figured out what we're spelling, or spelling it slowly is close enough to pronouncing it... Regardless, he wants to and insists on going.

When one of our dogs bark, I know that they want to be smacked upside the head. So I do. And they stop barking.

 

[the splat in the hat]

Originally posted by: interchange
There is evidence that Neanderthal man was smarter than homo-sapiens and that they were the first species to make art. Some scientists believe that Neanderthal man was actually assimilated into our species instead of just being wiped out.

Competition wasn't all about intelligence.

Theres more evidence to show our species bred them out gene wise and theres more evidence that our species was of higher intelligence. It was our species that migrated vast continents and incroched on there territory , well according to discovery anyways.

Universe wise , shite we may be alone , so far we are , fact , the only intelligent life ever, thats not to say the possibility of other intelligent life isnt out there, rather seeing it as it really is.
There is a very high chance mathamaticly that not only primative life but highly intelligent life is out there somewhere . Thats not scientific evidence , but its the closest we have to get any inkling in hypothisis on the subject.
One the other hand mathamaticly , the odds are also very much against any intelligent life [ like humanoids like us ] in the universe , ever evolving , of all the flukes it took for the conditions on earth to be perfect for humans, right down to our moon and its tide cycle , the odds are not good for humanoid life, but thats maths for ya.....

So if we are alone in this whole universe , surely we as humans must strive to spawn life within it , we see movies of humans in 2nd or 3rd or 6th generation sci fi , like say babalon 5 , but in real life what if we are the ones to be the first , to spawn a galaxy into life would be an incredible achievment for a race, but where does it leave our race ?
Gene defective maybe ?
Its all mindboggling when you really think about it just because of the pure scale of it all.

To think this whole universe created by a god ? 5000 odd years ago ?
I find that hard to believe , or we would have humanoid friends out there all over the place , universe is just to big , on the other hand if your into faith , its very convienent to believe that intelligent life must have been designed, giggle giggle , by a humaniod !

I believe in science , all the way , and i feel there may be intelligent life out there but it probably be very limited , not many species l believe would make it this far, general life , like bacteria, now that could verywell be found all over the place, we will just have to wait and see what science reviels next !

But so far we are alone , the only life to ever make high communication intelligence , factual, and it seems with the scale of it all its likely to stay that way for decades/eons .....

 

[lyssword]

Intelligence.. yeah *scratches head*

 

[Gatt]

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: Nithin

Originally posted by: DrPizza

I'm not around gorillas very often, but my vocabulary of dog is fairly good. I don't know how complicated their vocabularly is, but I can tell the difference between eat (food), water, play, someone's outside,...

you should change your nick to DrDolittle. haha.

Just about... sometimes, I'll be busy, one of the dogs will come over, make a bark sound, and I'll look at my wife and say "Dozer says he needs water." Sure enough, the water bowl will be empty, but the food dishes will be full.
As far as intelligence in animals goes, we can't say the word "ride" near two of our dogs. So, we started spelling the word. Now, if we spell "r - i - d - e", one of our dogs goes nuts... he's figured out what we're spelling, or spelling it slowly is close enough to pronouncing it... Regardless, he wants to and insists on going.

I suspect that we underestimate other species intelligence, not only out of sheer arrogance, but also because we fail to recognize that human speech isn't a prerequisite for intelligence.

As the quoted post above, I too have had a dog that learned quite well. My shephard learned the word "Treat" fairly quickly, before she passed on, we went through Treat, T-R-E-A-T, Cookie, and biscuit. All of them produced the same response, she started paying alot of attention. Now, given, there's some association there because the food provides motivation, but the ability to learn, retain, and associate a variety of human language words with a single object is indictive of some intelligence.

Similiarly, she had apparently watched us turn the water on and off in the bathroom over the years. One day, when she was around 3, I came home to find that her water dish had been spilled during the day.

And the bathroom faceut(sic) was running.

She then showed over the years that she no longer needed us to fill her bowl, if it was empty she would go into the bathroom, stand on her hind legs, hook a paw on the handle and turn on the water.

Equally of note, I have a Cat who taught herself to use the commode. No training whatsoever, she uses the toilet.

While not impressive, this indicates that these animals have some ability to reason, remember, and learn from observation not just training.

We assume because they can't speak Human Language they aren't intelligent, but that's assuming alot. They actually display a fair amount of intelligence, from communication, to learning. We just have no means of measuring it accurately. We also assume that because they can't manipulate a world designed for Humans that they are inherently stupid, but the assumption fails to account for the simple lack of an opposable thumb. I can promise you, were my animals able to manipulate doorknobs, they'd be quite capable of handling doors as well as I can.

Put simply, we live in a Human World and judge them by Human Standards, even the above mentioned Ape is being judged by learning a Human Language. It isn't a fair system for assessment.

Or to put it another way, how many people here have learned an Animals language? Cats communicate, so do Dogs. Apes, Monkeys, Dolphins, Whales, Horses, and many more. But we can't communicate with them, because we simply haven't learned their languages.

So how do we know how smart they really are if we can't speak to them?

 

[DrPizza]

Agreed.

Just read an article recently about female dolphins teaching their daughters how to use a sponge on the tip of their nose while foraging for food.
It's not an instinctive ability (like building a nest)... it's a taught behavior.
http://abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1385091.htm

 

[WiseOldDude]

If we are so damn smart why are things in such a frigging mess and how does a complete idiot get elected not once, but twice.

The more people I meet, the more I like my dogs.

 

[the splat in the hat]

Originally posted by: WiseOldDude
If we are so damn smart why are things in such a frigging mess and how does a complete idiot get elected not once, but twice.

The more people I meet, the more I like my dogs.

LOL , totally agree !

Go the k 9 's .............

 

[tuteja1986]

because the world is full of complete idiot that don't know crap about anything and the upper level power complete idiots control those idiots with a powerful tool called media and propaganda . Roman were master at it and those skills have been passed down for generations.

 

[the splat in the hat]

Romes got nothing on BUSH my friend, hahahaha , sh@t watch FOX network here in oz and it shows, watch al jazeer [ whatever it is] and watch cnn, and bbc news and the difference is incredible, the biggest propaganda producer, USA, ever in history , and media, well we have electronics now, so its not the same a a romeman comminnnnnng tto yyour door for tax and propaganda. FOX seem to be so byass its just a joke, FOX give general Americans a bad name and reputation, almost redneck like, and some of the outright rude interviews they do, are pathetic, and it shows there true colors.
l watch jim layher and cnn , they are just alot more ACCURATE in there reports , and the truth in IRAK and places the like, man FOX wont tell you how it really is on the ground , AL Jazeer does, some bs reports like all stations, but video footage is abundant, FOX its '' this is what happened we lost 2 soldiers we killed 48 or whatever'' we are in a world and day and age of the camera, yet half the reports never get video coverage in USA, you have to lob onto the ENEMIES tv service and get the rest of the story, like how many civilians we killed with that 48 , etc etc, its all bullsh@t, propaganda, WHATS THE TRUE FIGURE OF DEATH IN IRAK RIGHT NOW, since we invaded a couple years ago ? Do we have any real idea of the coladeral ? I dought it , we used to carpet bomb in ww2, we developed better weapons , more accurate , but in the backround our pollititions are killing just as many as any time in history. And how the f@ck would we know the actual figures, when we rely on a network thats in a very powerful persons pocket.All controlled by them, sheeeeesh the US govenment has been ILLEGALLY listening to its own people, to me that sort of defeats the bill of rights, but then again, gyontonimo base, the patriot act, the wild west ''wanted dead or alive '' speaches, the failure to have caught that person, yet still claim victory,m bahahahahahaha, yep , propaganda..........bushes middle name !

 

[toyotacamry]

Ok, earlier in the post a man made a good point about dogs and other animals. We've segregated domestic animals from eachother, so therefore they cannot develop any form of advanced communication or passing of knowledge. But yet, dogs can still communicate with eachother, they still know what to eat, and drink. Anyway, a physics teacher of mine once told me a scenario that went like this:

a "cave man" (or whatever form he was at the time) seperates from his tribe and decides to gather food. While doing so, he discovers a method to make fire. Upon embarking on his trip to return to his tribe, he is attacked by a tiger (or whatever you'd like to attack him) and killed. The knowledge of making fire is lost, and isn't discovered for another one million years.

Could scenarios like these have caused humans to evolve into what we are now? The advancedment of knowledge, no matter how basic, is imporant. The practice of certain skills, like hunting, weapon making, and other skills that involve coordination, could those have helped turn us into what we are now?

Can we say that we're the most evolved species? Evolved relative to what? The very technology that we strived so hard to make is the same technology that will destroy us. Do any of you honestly think that we can maintain this style of living for a few hundred years more? How much longer will the ozone hold up? I don't think that in any means we have evolved into a "good" species. We are self destructive. Who really knows. The tribes of indigenous people all around the world, the hunter-gathering nomads, are "barbaric" in our eyes. Yet, us, middle class westerners, see ourselves as being more evolved then them. Are we really? Are they the ones digging their own grave?


Just some thoughts.

 

[the splat in the hat]

My drunken thoughts would be , we have evoled to higher intelligence than any other species, and if l remember correctly, [ cant remember country ,was on discovery ages ago ] man invented the steam engine eons ago but had no way to actually build it, hundreds of years later , industrial revolution !
Yes we are a violent species , yes it maybe our undoing , but , we could be in a transitional period before the next scientific breakthrough that takes us to the stars, thus not only giving humans a real chance of species wide survival , but all species we can save, no we havent evolved to a piont where we dont kill on mass, for humans or animals, for all those who believe in god, and that a life is a life no matter the species, COWS? sheep ? pigs ? we kill millions of animals for food we really need not kill, dont get me wrong I love T bone , but on a planetary scale species scale , to leave Earth we really should be vegetarians, for survivability reasons.
I dont see us westerners as ANY more evolved , we probably kill more nowdays , and we take the cake with tribes , we are just cruel , and we suck for some of the things our pollititions have dragged us through, but if we make the next 100 to 200 years without ''nucing'' eachother or polluting ourselves to death, then we are the ONLY species to ever have had the chance to spawn a galaxy with life, Id say thats more evolved than anything we have or will see in the next few eons. We as nasty and cruel as we can be are life on earths ONLY chance for long long term survival, because we know the Earth will go one day no matter what.